Particular embodiments generally relate to purchase order generation for touchless buying.
A procurement system allows buyers to purchase items. A touchless buying process automatically converts an approved requisition into a purchase order and communicates it to a supplier without manual intervention from a buyer. In the conventional process, to enable the touchless buying process, a large amount of configuration is required. For example, for each item, sourcing rules need to be set up to allow the selection of a supplier. In addition, for each item, an approved supplier list (ASL) entry needs to be configured to govern generation of the purchase order for the item. The ASL includes the controls that govern whether touchless buying can be used to generate a purchase order for the item/supplier. The problem with the conventional solution lies in the level of effort required to setup and maintain the sourcing rules and ASL entries. The setup for sourcing rules and ASL entries are expensive because they are defined per item or category of the item.
Maintaining a separate sourcing rule that specifies who the supplier should be and an ASL entry may result in unnecessary overhead. One example illustrates the cost of this overhead. For an agreement for office supplies with 1000 line items, to enable touchless buying, a company has to setup:
1000 ASL entries, one for each line item; and
1000 sourcing rules, one for each line item.
At 5 minutes per ASL entry and 2 minutes per sourcing rule, the effort estimates to enable touchless buying are 7000 minutes (approx 116 hrs). Further to setting this up, the company will need to maintain these sourcing rules and ASL entries going forward, which adds additional cost.